How to help save the Marshall Islands

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Photos:Life on the Marshall Islands

Kids on the street in Majuro, Marshall Islands, in the remote Pacific, can tell you anything you want to know about climate change. They know the seas are rising. This basketball court is next to the foundation of a house destroyed in a recent flood.

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Photos:Life on the Marshall Islands

Marshallese people are known as master canoe builders and navigators. Including the ocean, the nation is three times the size of Texas. But it only has as much land as Washington, D.C. "We are not a small island country," said Tony de Brum, the foreign minister. "We are a big ocean country."

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Photos:Life on the Marshall Islands

Rositha Anwel, 22, said she woke up to find herself floating during a March 2014 flood. Some neighbors moved away, but Anwel can't imagine leaving her family's home on the water. "This is where I grew up," she said.

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Photos:Life on the Marshall Islands

The kemem, or first birthday party, is an important rite of passage in the Marshall Islands. These celebrations often are larger than weddings, and hundreds can attend.

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Photos:Life on the Marshall Islands

Waves crashed over this home in Majuro during a recent flood, according to residents. Some say they want to leave this precarious spot but don't have the money to do so.

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Photos:Life on the Marshall Islands

The Marshall Islands lives in a delicate conversation with the sea. The Pacific Ocean brings life and food, but lately some residents have started to fear the rising tides.

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Photos:Life on the Marshall Islands

Angie Hepisus recently buried her brother, one of 17 siblings, behind her home on the coast in Majuro. Other nearby grave sites on the island have washed away during floods.

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Photos:Life on the Marshall Islands

Wina Anmontha says her daughter, Roselinta, moved from Majuro to the United States in part because of fears that floods are becoming more common here.

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Photos:Life on the Marshall Islands

The Marshall Islands is an independent country but uses U.S. currency and has a contractual relationship with the United States. Marshallese people can live and work in the United States without a visa.

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Photos:Life on the Marshall Islands

Reef fish, breadfruit, rice and pandanus fruit are the staples of a traditional Marshallese diet. Junk food and soda have become common, too, and obesity rates are high in the islands.

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Photos:Life on the Marshall Islands

Angie Hepisus and her family said they decided not to repair this house after it was damaged in floods. Land in the Marshall Islands is managed communally by chiefs, so families often live in clusters together.

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Photos:Life on the Marshall Islands

When floodwaters rush in, residents say they tie their animals to trees to try to keep them from disappearing into the Pacific Ocean.

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Photos:Life on the Marshall Islands

Emi Anwel, 20, woke up to find water in her home during a recent flood. She licked her arm to be sure that, yes, the water tasted salty. That's how she knew the ocean was coming for her.

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Photos:Life on the Marshall Islands

Flooding is only the most obvious impact of sea level rise. Trees and crops along the coast die when they're saturated with saltwater. Supplies of freshwater also become contaminated. Some researchers say the islands likely will become uninhabitable long before they're submerged by rising sea levels.

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Story highlights

The Marshall Islands could disappear as sea levels rise

John Sutter recently traveled to that country as part of the Two° series

But stop and think for a minute about the fact that climate change -- which is my fault and yours, if you're living in the industrialized world, where our carbon emissions are contributing to warming -- actually could erase entire island nations from the map.

1. STOP POLLUTING (or try to pollute a little less...)

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Since I returned from the Marshall Islands, I can't hear the hum of the air conditioner without thinking about the coal that's burning to power my lifestyle -- and how the carbon emissions associated with my electricity use are contributing to long-term sea level rise.

We as individuals likely can't solve the climate change problem without help from governments and industry, but each of us can do our part to reduce our own fossil fuel emissions. Instead of feeling guilty about the pollution you create now, you should start feeling good about doing your part to pollute a little less. In the aggregate, it will make a big difference.

A few ideas about what you can do: turn your thermostat up in the summer and down in the winter; bike, walk or take public transportation; weatherize your home (there are financial incentives); buy electricity from green sources, where available; eat less meat, especially beef; and install solar panels.

2. Support efforts to keep Marshallese canoeing culture alive

Culture is being used to fight climate change in Majuro, Marshall Islands.

This is depressing but true: There's not much that people in the Marshall Islands can do to slow climate change and ensure that rising seas don't submerge their nation. Carbon dioxide emissions from Pacific nations make up just 0.03% of the global total.

But (but!) that doesn't mean people in the country are helpless.

They're using their stories to try to raise global awareness -- and to get the rest of us to realize, as one local poet told me, that "there are faces all the way out here."

They're also fighting climate change with a surprising weapon: culture.

Take Alson Kelen, director of a nonprofit called Waan Aelon in Majel, or Canoes of the Marshall Islands. He's training dropouts to build canoes from local breadfruit trees. In doing so, he's exposing them to the ancient Marshallese traditions of canoeing between the remote atolls that make up the country. He's preserving a way of life -- ensuring that at least one critical aspect of what it means to be Marshallese will survive even if, in the long term, the country doesn't.

3. Encourage industrialized countries to welcome climate migrants

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I met a family in the Marshall Islands that already decided to relocate -- to Springdale, Arkansas, of all places -- in part because they're concerned about more frequent flooding and climate change.

These sorts of climate migrations likely are going to become more common, even if the world takes swift action to curb carbon emissions. In a twisted sense, the Marshallese are lucky: Because of the Compact of Free Association, they're allowed to live and work in the United States legally. Citizens of Bangladesh, the Maldives and Kiribati -- other nations where many poor people in low-lying areas are likely to be displaced -- may not be able to legally move to another country. What happens if your island nation disappears and you have nowhere legally to go? That's a question that should bother all of us, and to which we do not have an answer.

By international law, there's no such thing as a "climate refugee." You can't claim asylum in another country because yours has been submerged.

I'd encourage you to raise this issue with the United States, the European Union and the United Nations and ask them to recognize the urgency of the coming climate migration crisis and to pledge to welcome would-be migrants should they want or need to come. Industrialized countries -- the United States, China, Australia, those of the European Union -- are causing climate change, and it's our moral duty to welcome people who may be displaced by our callous indifference. There's little sign to date, however, that we'll do so.

, which is likely what's needed, according to activists and analysts, to stop warming short of 2 degrees Celsius.

5. Join the "Keep it in the ground" movement

What if we could stop fossil fuels from coming out of the ground in the first place? That might be one way to ensure that the world stays below its carbon budget of 1,000 gigatonnes (about a quadrillion U.S. tons) -- the amount of carbon we can pump into the air and still hope to stay short of 2 degrees of warming. The Guardian newspaper and 350.org, the activist group, have teamed up to rally people behind this concept, which they're calling the "Keep it in the Ground" campaign.